


It's the most wonderful time of the year

by Tereshkova (EarthboundCosmonaut)



Series: Occasional flashes of competence [5]
Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: Artisan gin, Christmas Party, Existential Angst, Gen, How does someone lose their shoes?, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 05:52:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13117401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EarthboundCosmonaut/pseuds/Tereshkova
Summary: "Go to bed, ye'll feel better in the morning."She hugs him with such suddenness and such ferocity that it's all that he can do to stay on his feet. "Thanks Malcolm," she mumbles into his chest."Wha' for?""For not being a dick."He chuckles. "Yeah, well even God took a day off every now and then."In which Malcolm and Nicola spend most of the Party Christmas party in a stairwell. Rated T for canon-typical language and violence.





	It's the most wonderful time of the year

**Author's Note:**

> So um, happy Christmas? _The day we met the Doctor_ provided a slice of Whovian Christmas fluff. Now for a story that reflects my own attitude towards Christmas: bleak, melancholy and full of regret. 
> 
> I found this much harder to write than the rest of the series. It's such a jarring change of tone that I considered posting it as a stand-alone work. However, it's part of the wider story arc I have planned so I decided to keep it in. Expect less humour, more angst and some mild violence (nothing more graphic than canon).

The yard outside the service entrance to Party headquarters is dark, run down and squalid - mirroring exactly how Malcolm feels. It has been a long evening, at the end of a long week, at the end of a long fucking year. An hour watching his Party colleagues making tits of themselves at a free bar had been enough to make him realise just how tired he is. Dog tired. Bone tired. So fucking weary that he can feel nothing and think very little.

He sighs, resting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. The weather's cooled in the last few days and the chill of the night air is welcome. At least it lets him feel something other than the deep seated sense of disillusionment that has settled over him.

A rush of warm, stale air washes over him as the door crashes open, bouncing off the wall before being slammed shut. Malcolm cringes. So much for getting away from the Party twats.

"Oh, sorry, I didn't realise there was someone here."

He turns around to see Nicola Murray slumped against the door. She is barefoot and dishevelled, clutching a bottle of spirits by the neck. Judging by the mascara smudged under her eyes, she has been crying.

She turns around to go back inside. Malcolm hesitates for a moment. He'd really rather be alone, but Nicola's not as bad as the rest of them and she looks upset. Maybe the company will snap him out of his maudlin mood. He reaches out to place a stilling hand on her ankle. "S'all right Nic'la. Plenty of room."

She regards him for a moment, then comes to sit next to him on the back step, mirroring his elbows on knees posture. "What've yeh got there?" he asks, gesturing to her bottle. She holds it up so that he can see. Sipsmiths gin. She's such a walking stereotype sometimes - or maybe more of a staggering stereotype this evening.

"Can ah have some?" She hands it to him and he takes a swig, coughing as the aroma of the botanicals catches in the back of his throat. He sets the bottle down on the opposite side of him to her. It's already a quarter empty and he knows from previous experience that Nicola Murray is embarrassingly lightweight when it comes to alcohol.

"D'you have a cigarette?" she asks him.

"No, I don't smoke. Neither do you."

She rubs her hands over her face, smearing her ruined mascara even more, but doesn't seem inclined to say anything else.

"Where's Rugger Bugger?" He'd spotted James earlier, braying over a highly offensive joke with the Chancellor. The Chancellor who is already on a yellow card for making homophobic comments on a constituency walkabout.

"Who gives a shit?" she asks venomously.

"You do. Or yeh wouldn't be out here crying." One way or another, the problems that make Nicola upset - as opposed to panicky or hysterical - always seem to trace back to her waste-of-skin husband.

"I'm not crying," she tells him, but the hitch in her voice undermines her protest. Nicola stares fixedly into the stairwell. "He's taken a selfie with every member of cabinet and now he's playing drinking games with the spads."

Malcolm nods. Ollie and Glenn are not typical of the Party's special advisors. Most of them are young - usually under 30 - impressionable and, more often than not, female. It isn't hard to see why James Murray would want to pass his time playing drinking games with them, or why Nicola is upset about it. It doesn't explain what's happened to her shoes though. He's not sure he wants to know.

"So yeh not enjoying the party then?"

"I hate Christmas parties. I hate the stupid music and pretending that I like the fucking Nutters and the way everyone gets twatted."

"Yer on yer way to getting twatted yerself."

She turns to look at him. "Not twatted enough. Give me my drink back," she demands.

He hands her the bottle and notices the gooseflesh on her arm. Her cheeks are still flushed from alcohol but her lips have a bluish tinge. "For Christ's sake, Nicky, yer freezing." He removes his jacket and, when she makes no effort to help him, slings it over her shoulders.

From his altered angle he notices something dark beneath her fringe. He pushes the frizz back. There's a rapidly darkening bruise forming on her forehead from which a trickle of dark blood oozes.

"Wha' the fuck's this?"

Nicola puts her hand to her head and stares in surprise at the blood that stains her fingers. Her eyes are glassy and he wonders whether she may be concussed rather than drunk - or as well as being drunk. "I don't know. It's nothing."

"It's no' nothin'," he tells her, moving her head so he can get a better look. There's a definite lump and she winces when he gently presses the spot.

She ducks away from his hand. "Piss off Malcolm."

"Wha' happened?" he persists.

"I bumped my head on the wall."

"Even you're no' clumsy enough to walk into a wall."

"Leave it alone," she snaps, turning away from him.

"Nic'la," he insists, placing a hand on her arm. "Wha' happened? Did that shit fer brains oaf hit you?"

"No!" She jerks away from him. "I hit him! We had another stupid fucking argument and _I_ hit _him_. He just pushed me off and I bumped my head against the wall."

Malcolm groans. She can't seriously believe _that_? "You're Nicola _Murray_ , clueless MP for Leavesden, not Nicola fuckin' _Adams_. He's a foot taller than you and built like a brick shithouse Nic'la! You against him could _never_ be a fair fight!"

" _Don't shout at me!_ "

He has, he realises, been shouting. He's furious about how dense she is being, but even more so at her twat of a husband for pushing her about in the first place. "Sorry. I'm not angry at you."

Nicola glares at him for a moment before returning her gaze to the stairwell. "He didn't hit me, Malcolm. He doesn't care about me enough to hit me." Her voice falters and she pulls the coat about herself miserably.

He rubs his face with his hands. He has no idea what to do. Well that's not quite true - he'd love to go back inside, pin James Murray against a wall and rip his testicles off. But Nicola's sitting outside in the cold with no shoes on, drunk and possibly concussed. He shouldn't leave her on her own, and it's this responsibility that he feels ill equipped for.

They sit in silence for a while. Nicola takes another swig of gin. He takes the bottle, swallows a large mouthful and puts it out of her reach again.

"Why are you sitting out here by yourself?" she asks after a while.

"Ah'm not by myself any more, am I?" 

He's not sure what it is about Nicola Murray that's so disarming - maybe because she's so guileless that he never feels he has to watch his back with her. Maybe because she's a mess this evening and if he answers her question then at least he'll feel like he's doing _something_ useful. "I go' fed up of all those self-serving cunts slappin' each other on the back and suckin' each other's dicks."

"That's what they always do."

He sighs. "I'm tired, I need a break." Although if he's completely honest with himself, he's not sure it's a break he needs. When he stops, he starts to think. And when he starts to think, he's confronted by the pointlessness of his existence. He pours everything he has into this job - his energy, his heart, every fucking waking moment of his life and the many moments when he should be asleep but isn't because he's dealing with the next round of shit. He gives everything he has to the Party because once, a long time ago, he believed that it could make a difference. And every moment since then he's been desperately trying to avoid admitting that it can't.

Nicola's watching him with that weird, unreadable look that she directs at him sometimes. "Are you happy Malcolm?"

"Of course I'm fuckin' happy. What kind of question is that?"

"You never seem very happy." They sit in silence a while longer, and then she says " _You're_ not a self-serving cunt," as though she's having some kind of epiphany.

"Oh well thanks Nic'la, don't go all out with the compliments, will yeh?"

"I didn't mean it like that. You _are_ a complete cunt most of the time, but it's not self-serving. Malcolm Tucker doesn't benefit from you being a total, warmongering prick. You always laugh at me for wanting to make a difference but that's what you're trying to do too, in your own twisted, chauvinistic way, isn't it?"

Christ, how does she do that? How does a woman who doesn't even know her left from her right put her finger so unerringly on the truth? He opens his mouth to answer and something hard and painful rises in his throat. His eyes prickle and he realises that if he tries to say anything he's going to cry. He hasn't cried since he was fifteen. He didn't even know he was capable of it any more.

Nicola's face softens. "Oh Malcolm." She places her hand on his back, rubbing it soothingly. "It's hard sometimes, isn't it?"

He jolts at the physical contact - it's something he normally tries to avoid at all costs. But her hand on his back is comforting. He can't remember how long it's been since anyone's touched him like this. He has sex - emotionless shags with a succession of people he doesn't care about - but no one ever tries to comfort him. Not since his marriage spectacularly disintegrated. He places an arm around Nicola's shoulder and tugs her into his side. She burrows her head into his armpit and they sit like that for an indeterminate amount of time. Gradually the pain in his chest subsides and he breathes deeply, steadying himself with lungfuls of crisp air.

"What are you doing at Christmas?" she asks.

He's baffled by the non-sequitur.  "What?"

"Christmas. Where will you be?"

"At home. Waiting for the next inevitable shitstorm from your lot to hit."

"You shouldn't be on your own, Malcolm. Not at the moment."

"Think yeh know what's best for me now, do you?"

She ignores his half-hearted attempt to dismiss this line of conversation. "Where does Cecily's mum live?"

"My sister? Mugdock. Near Glasgow."

"Why don’t you go there? Your Blackberry will still work in Scotland - you can bollock people as well up there as you can down here. And at least you won't be on your own. I'd invite you round to us but Christmas with four kids and James' parents is hell on earth."

He snorts. "Maybe _you_ need to get away for Christmas. Leave Rugger Bugger to sort out the turkey."

"I wouldn't put the kids through that."

They lapse into silence again until Malcolm feels Nicola shudder. He thinks at first she must be crying again, but then he realises that she's shivering. No wonder, she's sitting on a stone step in the middle of December wearing only a dress and his jacket.

"Come on," he tells her, rubbing her arms to get some warmth back into them.

"What?" her voice is muffled by his chest.

"It's too cold out here, yeh need to go inside."

"I don't want to go back inside."

"Tough. I've got enough problems without you dying of exposure." He stands and tugs her to her feet. Nicola allows herself to be led back into Party HQ. In the sickly yellow light of the service corridor she looks even worse. Her eyes are red and ringed with mascara and her skin is white from cold. "Let's sort yer face out, you look like the ghost of Christmas past."

He leads her to the ladies. One of the spads, who is reapplying her lipstick at the mirror, yelps when she sees him. "You can't be in here. This is the ladies!"

"You're no fuckin' lady so you can piss off." She grabs her bag and scuttles out, casting a resentful look at him.

Nicola stands placidly while he wets a hand towel and wipes away the smudged makeup. Taking advantage of her lack of resistance, he wets another towel and dabs at the blood on her forehead. She hisses but doesn't move away.

“What do you want to do now?” he asks.

She is leaning against the sink, her eyes wide and unfocused. “Crawl into a hole and die.”

“Not an option – too much of a ballache for me to smooth over with the press.”

"Then I want to go home."

***

He manages to retrieve her coat and her handbag - which someone had found abandoned in the function room and handed in to the cloakroom attendant - but there's no sign of her shoes. Nicola doesn't even seem to have noticed that she's walking around barefoot, so he gives up looking and hails a cab.

For the third time in as many months, Malcolm finds himself making sure that Nicola Murray gets home safely. This time instead of just waiting in the car until she's got into the house, he dismisses the cab and follows her to the front door. He's still not convinced that she's not concussed, and he wants to make sure that she doesn't drink anything else. She's not had too much at the moment, but in the mood she's in she could easily crack open the Baileys - or whatever foul concoction passes for a tipple in the Murray household - and drink herself into a stupor.

She fumbles trying to get her keys out of her handbag so he takes it from her and unlocks the front door.

"What are you doing?" asks Nicola as he holds the door open for her.

"Makin' sure yeh get home safely."

"I'm not a damsel in distress."

"No, you're a fuckin' retard. I don't trust yeh not to kill yourself in some ridiculous middle class way like tripping over a Ming vase, knocking yerself out on a granite counter and gettin' eaten by peacocks."

Nicola shrugs, which he takes as a confirmation that this is not outside the realm of possibility.

The hall light is on but the house is silent. Nicola places her finger over her lips in an exaggerated _be quiet_ mime.

"Where are the kids?" he asks, sotto voce.

"In bed. Katie's babysitting."

"Right, come on then Slummy Mummy." He finds the kitchen and seats her at the table, passing her a glass of water. "Drink tha' and then get tae bed."

Nicola obediently drinks the water and swallows two Nurofen that he finds - of all places - behind the coffee jar. Then he ushers her upstairs and finds her bedroom. It is - predictably - chaotic. Half a dozen discarded dresses litter the floor and the dressing table looks like the ground zero of a controlled explosion. He guesses that Nicola's side of the bed is the one with the biography of Aneurin Bevan on the bedside cabinet and fishes a pair of pyjamas from under the pillow. "Go an' get dressed and do your teeth," he tells her, shoving the pyjamas into her hands.

While he waits, he retrieves the dresses and hangs them back in the wardrobe. When she returns she looks freshly scrubbed and wan. "Let's see yer head," he instructs.

She pouts, but allows him to position her under the overhead light. He prods the wound on her forehead - which doesn't seem to have got any worse - and checks that her pupils are even and reactive to light. He can't see anything wrong. He's seen Nicola drunk before and she's not a quiet drunk, so her puts her passive behaviour down to emotional fatigue rather than alcohol abuse. She's had enough to regret it tomorrow but not enough to be a danger to herself.

"Go to bed, ye'll feel better in the morning."

She hugs him with such suddenness and such ferocity that it's all that he can do to stay on his feet. "Thanks Malcolm," she mumbles into his chest.

"Wha' for?"

"For not being a dick."

He chuckles. "Yeah, well even God took a day off every now and then." He nudges her towards the bed and waits until she is under the covers before turning off the bedroom lights.

"Phone your sister," she tells him as he pulls the door shut.

"Goodnight Nico'la."

***

Malcolm waits in the living room until he hears a taxi pull up outside the house. He yanks the front door open while James is still fumbling with his house keys. James stares at him in surprise, his face flushed and his eyes struggling to focus. He reeks of beer and Sambuca.

"What are you doing here?" he asks.

"Waitin' for you."

"Why?"

Malcolm hasn't headbutted anyone in a long time. He finds the crunching sound as his head connects with the soft part of James' nose deeply satisfying.

"Argh!" James clutches his face, from which blood is gushing all over his shirt and the expensively restored Victorian floor tiles. "What the fuck?"

Malcolm takes him by the lapels and manhandles him into the hall. James is so drunk that he can do little more than follow where Malcolm's momentum takes him. "I obviously didn't make myself clear the last time," he hisses.  "If anyone stops my ministers from doing their job, I fuck them up so hard that they're shitting out of their nostrils."

"What's this ab-"

"This is about you bein' a drunken, sexually incontinent bully."

"Malc, I don't-"

"This is yer last warning. You are a useless father and an even worse husband. Unless you want to be sneezing shit, you sort yerself out. And don't _ever_ fuckin' call me _Malc_!"

With that Malcolm pulls the front door shut behind him and runs to catch James' cab before it drives away.

***

He's woken up the next morning by the buzzing of his Blackberry. It's Nicola. "What?" he demands, levering himself into an upright position.

"Malcolm," she sounds panicky. "Malcolm, I think I broke James' nose last night. I woke up and he's asleep on the sofa and there's blood _everywhere_. It's all bruised like that time you hit Glenn and - _fuck_! What am I going to do?! What if he calls the police?"

"Nic'la! Take a deep fuckin' breath before yeh suffocate yerself."

"Fuck Malcolm. Fuck fuck _fuck_!" But he hears her sucking in a deep breath and exhaling.

"Nic'la, yeh didn't break James' nose - you can't even reach his nose."

"But I don't remember what happened after I got home. I remember getting into bed and then nothing until I woke up this morning." There's an edge of hysteria in her voice.

"Tha's because you were asleep. Or unconscious. He was drunk - he probably got intae a fight. He's no' exactly Mr Diplomacy."

"What do I do?!"

"Offer him an ice pack."

"Oh Christ!" Her breathing is still panicky.

"Nic'la, where are yeh?"

"In the hall."

"Go outside into the back garden and get some air." He hears shuffling and then the muffled bang of a door. Gradually her breathing resumes a more regular pace. "Better?"

"Yes, a bit."

"Right, now listen to me. You did _not_ break that feckless piece of shit's nose. You couldn't if yeh tried - yeh don't know how. Plus you probably punch like an earthworm."

She breathes in and out. "Okay, okay."

He sits on the phone with her until her breathing is no longer audible. When he's fairly sure that she's back to normal - which is admittedly a relative term where Nicola Murray is concerned - he tells her: "I can't stay on the phone all day, I've got things to be doing. So you go back inside, take some of that homeopathic crap that yeh keep necking, and give that wolf pack of yours breakfast before they turn feral."

"Okay," she says, sounding far calmer than she did a few moments ago. "But Malcolm, don't forget you need to ring your sister."

"Aye, well I can't do that while yer on the fuckin' phone, can I?"

She lets out a shaky laugh. "Right. Well have a good Christmas then."

"Yeah, you too Nic'la."

He hangs up, makes himself a super strength coffee and eats two satsumas. While he eats he stares at his phone, contemplating the two days of loneliness, boredom and confrontation by the pointlessness of his existence that face him if he stays in London for Christmas. He doesn't feel he has the energy for anything more at the moment, but for once Nicola's right - lying around in his dressing gown wallowing in his own misery is a terrible idea. He picks up his Blackberry and scrolls through his contact book for his sister's number.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who's left kudos and comments on this series. It's the first time I've posted fic and I'm really grateful to you for taking the time to provide feedback!


End file.
